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墨書 Inktalez
The cooling liquid from my father's chest cavity continued to drip, the scent of Jasmine Essence mingling with the metallic tang of blood, reminiscent of the smell of my mother's hair on the day of the accident. I knelt beside the mechanical shell of Carbonization, as the encoding of "CX-743" gnawed at my father's gears like maggots. As those devoured parts writhed beneath the skin, they suddenly triggered a series of unfamiliar memories: on my fifth birthday, sitting on the back seat of a bicycle, my father's palm covering my fingertip as he taught me how to brake; the lingering scent of Jasmine Essence from his cuff now overlapped with reality.
With each gear absorbed into the skin, a distorted memory was released: it was a lie that my father taught me to ride a bike on my seventh birthday—the truth was that he implanted the first chip into my occipital bone. Those encoded memories materialized in my compound eye as data streams; I saw my nerve synapses growing silver filaments, akin to the CX series cultures in the laboratory's ventilation ducts.
His shadow split into six mechanical arms under the streetlight, needles piercing my occipital bone as he softly cooed, "Mo Er, this is medicine to make you brave." The voice was deep and cold, like the hum of an incubator in the lab, yet it carried an almost imperceptible tremor, as if even he could not fully believe this lie. At that moment, those mechanical arms and remains crawled beneath my skin, while parasites from my palm print greedily consumed my father's mechanical spine. Suddenly, golden compound eyes decoded hidden data—my father's mechanical spine was etched with baby footprints, each marked with different dates, the most recent being three days ago.
It turned out that what people called paternal love was merely a calibration parameter for an experiment subject's temperature.
The devoured gears suddenly reorganized into sound within my blood vessels—it was the voice of seven-year-old me crying outside the liquid nitrogen chamber: "Mommy, why did you lock the door?" Yet from within the cabin came my father's calm yet cruel recording: "Emotional module loading complete. Beginning 743rd personality iteration."
I frantically clawed at my palm print until the encoding of "CX-743" was covered in blood. Those blood pearls dripped onto my father's remains, congealing into my mother's last handwritten note: "You are not a number; you are Mo Er."
"Does it hurt, Uncle?"
A little girl suddenly pressed down on my burned palm print, golden light flowing into her pupils from the crack. Her fingertip glimmered with metallic luster, and beneath her nail lay a microchip. The fluid flowing through her blood vessels was not blood but cooling liquid mixed with Jasmine Essence. This scent was identical to that of my mother's preserved body, reminding me how her frozen eyelashes shattered into ice shards when the liquid nitrogen chamber exploded. Those ice shards were now reorganizing in my compound eye's vision, forming a holographic projection of Tokyo Tower; from its tip, an infinite symbol leaked silver slime that matched exactly with the components of the cultivation liquid inside my father's mechanical spine.
As new commands lit up on the monitor screen, high heels echoed down the corridor—tap, tap, tap. The sound was identical to that of my mother picking me up from school, but each step was precisely spaced at 0.743 seconds apart. A woman in a white lab coat leaned against the door frame, her sleeve sliding out a mechanical tentacle resembling a teddy bear. Her face was a metallic skeleton like that of a soda can model; yet her voice carried my mother's vocal frequency: "I have been looking for you for twelve years." As she spoke, her jaw opened 120 degrees to reveal a miniature winch rotating within her throat—identical to the mechanical structure seen in subway advertisements.
"Shut up!" I smashed open a fire cabinet; when the axe struck her shoulder, liquid nitrogen splattered out, freezing into ice crystals encoding "CX-101" on the ground. The icy crystals reflected harsh white light like a shattered mirror, revealing countless distorted versions of myself. Each reflection's compound eye mutated: some pupils fractured into gears; others displayed burning images of classroom desks; and at the farthest edge of reflections even showed slow-motion footage of my mother knocking against the bulkhead in the liquid nitrogen chamber using Morse code.
She tore off her face to reveal my mother's frozen visage: "You should have died in that car accident all those years ago; she forcibly replaced the experimental parameters." The projection beneath her collarbone displayed: my mother clawing at her chest inside the liquid nitrogen chamber and engraving "CX-692" into my embryonic mechanical spine. Those scratches transformed into data chains in projection and created quantum entanglement with the genetic sequence of parasites in my palm print. Suddenly, through my compound eye I could see three kilometers away into a subway tunnel—groups of CX-0 prototypes were gnawing at the tracks; their excrement crystallized into Jasmine Essence flowing through ventilation ducts toward here.
The little girl screamed as asphalt seeped through cracks in tiles. The woman's (mother's replica) mechanical tentacle ensnared her ankle: "CX-0, your mission is to become a vessel, not a pet!" The tentacle's surface displayed Sunshine Primary School's curriculum schedule; under "Parent-Child Activity Class," various clone numbers of mine were densely listed across different years. The teddy bear's remains suddenly surged forth; its eye socket shot lasers that sliced through the tentacle—within its crushed cotton lay drops of blood I had shed yesterday. That blood pearl hovered in midair like a miniature black sun emitting an eerie glow. As its light swept across the monitor screen, it revealed layers of information I had never seen before: all CX experiment subjects were mutated branches of my mother's genes while father was merely a puppet executing her final code.
My father's remaining vocal cords module suddenly played back the truth: "The guide will disguise itself as anyone you desire; they are patches for your genetic defects..." Memories flashed back: in the subway station, blinking frequencies matched those found in mother's diary's Morse code; girls' mothers never existed—all interactions labeled "mother-daughter" were merely roles played by guides. These images were abruptly deconstructed by compound eye into binary waterfalls; I grasped key frames amid this data torrent—when I activated Singularity program all gene batteries projected holographic images of Earth's orphans. Those preserved children's doodles through quantum tunneling condensed into crimson warnings: "Please do not extinguish the last light."
"Mom..." I tore open the woman's collar; chip interfaces matched perfectly with father’s mechanical spine. Her eyeball popped out revealing bloody options: "Choose: A. Kill me and restart experiment B. Inherit permissions C. ■■" Option C trembled violently; when focused upon by compound eye it revealed an encryption command written using mother's DNA. Suddenly alarms blared throughout the laboratory signaling liquid nitrogen leaks as countless cryogenic chambers emerged from within walls—each cabin contained an ongoing mechanization process of “me,” with newest one's chest still impaled by bicycle key from seven years ago.
"Choose C." The little girl's voice suddenly transformed into mother’s dying scream. She tore open her chest; golden light from cracks formed mother’s face: "I am CX-692!" In an explosion-like strong light three fathers began merging: remnants of mother’s gene lock within me; civilization countdown generator within father’s mechanical spine; alarms blared as coordinates for Tokyo Tower burned into retina. The infinite symbol atop began fracturing revealing an embryo-like giant brain inside—that was truly civilization restart device. The surface grooves on giant brain magnified one hundred thousand times revealed palm prints where silver nematodes gnawed at nodes forming infinite symbols.
"It’s time to say goodbye." The little girl (mother's persona) kissed my trembling eyelids as Jasmine Essence thickened to suffocation levels. Her body dissolved in golden light leaving only teddy bear remains falling to ground. Within its eye socket floated mother’s holographic image softly humming lullabies—exactly like how she used to lull me to sleep during childhood. But when I adjusted compound eye to infrared spectrum I saw sound waves reorganizing molecules of Jasmine Essence in air forming underground subway map leading to Tokyo.
I picked up the teddy bear and found new instructions engraved on its back: "Go to Tokyo and kill all suns." Those words seemed seared onto it with red-hot iron wire; every stroke emitted smoke and radiated scorching heat. When I touched those words with fingertip parasites from palm print suddenly expelled metallic threads connecting with data interface inside teddy bear’s body. Black slime surged forth from its cotton wool solidifying into miniature Tokyo Tower model at its base embedded half an apple core—the very one I had bitten through at age seven; now within its core chip displayed mother’s final log:
"When all suns extinguish, Jasmine flowers will bloom amidst embers of time."
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